By Asso Hassan Zadeh
Dr Abdulrahman Ghassemlou, Secretary General of the Iranian Kurdistan Democratic Party was assassinated 25 years ago by the very people who were supposed to discuss with him, on behalf of the Islamic Republic, a political solution to the Kurdish issue in Iran.
Ghassemlou had devoted his entire life to the freedom of the Kurdish people and did everything to make this cause known at times when the Kurds were being repressed, their rights denied, and the international community was barely conscious of their plight and existence.
Ghassemlou’s charisma and exceptional and multifaceted personality is not the only reason that he is still so present in the political mind and collective memory of the Kurds, especially in Iran. It is also because Ghassemlou's story is a living and continuing story.
Ghassemlou imbued the cause of the Kurds in Iran with a number of features that made it more than a cause for their national rights. He embodied the very antithesis of the philosophy of governance of the Islamic Republic. The effectiveness of his struggle led the Iranian regime to put him as a main target on the list of opponents to be eliminated. Ghassemlou’s assassination marked the beginning of an intensive wave of killing opponents abroad in the aftermath of the Iran-Iraq war.
In a polarized Middle East Ghassemlou maintained rationality and balance. He wanted to be a conciliator of tensions and contradictions surrounding the Kurdish issue and the question of democracy in the region.
Ghassemlou who would later become an oriental Marxist and a nationalist leader, was born in 1930, to an Assyrian Christian mother and a feudal lord father who had been active in the creation of the Kurdish Republic of Mahabad in 1946.
Though he came from an underdeveloped society, when he began his dissident activities against the Shah's regime, Ghassemlou followed the path of modernity and knowledge in Paris and Prague where he studied Economics and Political Science. But his spirit and love for knowledge were such that his expertise went far beyond the scope of his specialty. Speaking a dozen languages, he was also accomplished in history and literature. Those who met him felt to be in the presence of a living encyclopedia of culture.
Ghassemlou was also a man of action, with rare courage and a great sense of initiative and risk-taking. Whether during his early academic life or political career, his courageous position often put him in difficult situations. Nevertheless, he always preferred this option than to trample his own principles the most important of which was political independence. He would never accept support or an alliance at the expense of his independence.
Ghassemlou was a firm believer in the Kurds’ right to self-determination so far as to say that if one day the Kurds were to one day establish an independent state encompassing all the Kurds, it wouldn’t constitute secession, but reunification. However, his understanding of the complexity of the Kurdish question and geopolitical realities of his time pushed him to strive for the national rights of the Kurds within a democratic Iran.
Inscribing his struggle within the boundaries of Iran did not make him indifferent to the need of solidarity between the Kurds of other countries. He believed that the Kurdish movement in every part of Kurdistan should keep in mind the interests of Kurds in other parts, especially in the context of their relations with the governments of the countries they lived in.
Despite his strong convictions and clear principles, Ghassemlou was a pragmatic politician who wouldn’t submit to the dictates of dogma. The deeply secular man that he was, following the 1979 Islamic revolution, he was still elected as the only lay representative to the first constituent assembly (Council of Experts). Iranian KDP candidates were also elected in the first parliamentary elections. However, the new regime invalidated their election and Ghassemlou never attended the sessions of the Assembly because of threats to his life by Ayatollah Khomeini.
Ghassemlou always preferred political and peaceful solutions. Even after Khomeini issued the fatwa to attack Iranian Kurdistan, Ghassemlou agreed to begin negotiations with a regime he considered anachronistic. He did this, once again, at the end of the Iran-Iraq war. But it turned out that the first negotiations were only a tactic by the regime to buy time to regain control of the Kurdish areas, and the second negotiations were a trap to kill Ghassemlou himself.
Political morality, so dear to Ghassemlou, also applied internationally. Despite the Communist domination of the world where had lived and studied, he did not hesitate to take a stand against the Soviet intervention in Czechoslovakia in 1968. Nor did he hesitate to condemn the hostage taking at the U.S. Embassy in Tehran in 1979. Given the anti-imperialist climate then, these stances were simply outstanding. Later, in the 1980s, while leading an armed resistance against the Iranian regime, he introduced “Democratic Socialism” into his party program. His goal was to distance himself and his party from the existing Socialism --particularly for its lack of democracy-- and also to better justify and facilitate the support he was seeking from the West.
Ghassemlou was the Kurdish leader who most contributed to internationalizing the Kurdish question. At a time when the outside world showed very little interest in the Kurdish cause, he thought that Kurds could not afford to base their external relations on purely ideological criteria. Hence, he developed friendly relations with European social democrats --most of whom remained very impressed by his extraordinary personality and vision. He was also supposed to go to the United States a week after the date he was assassinated. Despite the just and progressive character of Ghassemlou's struggle, the attention and support he obtained was only humanitarian.
Ghassemlou was passionate about life, a great humanist and a true democrat. He was opposed to the cult of personality and could live in harsh conditions like his Peshmargas. He believed that the struggle for national rights of the Kurdish people must not neglect ideals of social justice and equality, especially between men and women.
Fighting against a regime that had no regard for its own precepts or the international laws, he would say, should not make us violate our own values and human dignity. Thus he taught his Peshmargas to treat prisoners well, release them systematically, and refrain from terrorist methods, even though he knew this would mean a lack of interest in the world media.
For Iranian Kurds Ghassemlou's story is continuous because it represents an open wound. Not only they decry a crime that deprived them of an exceptional leader by abusing his good faith. They are also outraged by the scandal and injustice committed by the Austrian government that not only freed two of the murderers but also escorted one of them to the Iran Air flight at the airport.
There has been no justice, and no judiciary pursuit to this crime. But the economic and security blackmail to which the Austrian government surrendered could not prevent the German courts to declare in 1997, during the Mykonos Trial on the assassination of Ghassemlou's successor, Sadeq Sharafkandi, that the highest leaders of the Islamic Republic were responsible for the terror machine set up to eliminate its opponents abroad.
Today, Iranian Kurds feel anger and disappointment by the fact that the international community continues to turn a blind eye to their fate and that the whole question of human rights and democracy in Iran is still neglected and overshadowed by dealings between the Iranian regime and the international community around security issues.
To allow the reinstatement of Ghassemlou's murder case is not only fair and moral, but also politically productive. There will be no lasting or genuine international peace and harmony - on which national security and even economic interests of western powers depend - unless there are in the Middle East responsible governments who first respect the rights of their own citizens.
While the Middle East is in more turmoil than ever and new windows seem to be opening to the Kurdish question, all those who knew Ghassemlou believe that he was ahead of his time and that history has missed its date with him.
* Member of the Central Committee of KDP Iran
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